China: the New Creative Power in Architecture PDF Download

Author: Chris Van Uffelen
Publisher: Braun Publishing
ISBN: 9783037682678
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
About the most important and interesting contemporary architects from China and their projects at home and abroad.

Author: Austin Williams
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350003239
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
By 2025, China will have built fifteen new 'supercities' each with 25 million inhabitants. It will have created 250 'Eco-cities' as well: clean, green, car-free, people-friendly, high-tech urban centres. From the edge of an impending eco-catastrophe, we are arguably witnessing history's greatest environmental turnaround - an urban experiment that may provide valuable lessons for cities worldwide. Whether or not we choose to believe the hype – there is little doubt that this is an experiment that needs unpicking, understanding, and learning from. Austin Williams, The Architectural Review's China correspondent, explores the progress and perils of China's vast eco-city program, describing the complexities which emerge in the race to balance the environment with industrialisation, quality with quantity, and the liberty of the individual with the authority of the Chinese state. Lifting the lid on the economic and social realities of the Chinese blueprint for eco-modernisation, Williams tells the story of China's rise, and reveals the pragmatic, political and economic motives that lurk behind the successes and failures of its eco-cities. Will these new kinds of urban developments be good, humane, healthy places? Can China find a 'third way' in which humanity, nature, economic growth and sustainability are reconciled? And what lessons can we learn for our own vision of the urban future? This is a timely and readable account which explores a range of themes – environmental, political, cultural and architectural – to show how the eco-city program sheds fascinating light on contemporary Chinese society, and provides a lens through which to view the politics of sustainability closer to home.

Author: Charlotte Fiell
Publisher: Laurence King Publishing
ISBN: 9781786274922
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Contemporary Chinese Furniture Design is the first definitive book on contemporary Chinese furniture, introducing the work of leading designers and design studios, including Chen Darui, Jerry Chen, Frank Chou, Hou Zheng–Guang, Hong Wei, Ma Yansong, Neri & Hu, Shao Fan, Shang Xia, Song Tao, Studio MVW, Xiao Tianyu and Zhang Zhoujie. It explains how the 'New Wave' of Chinese furniture designers are looking back to their cultural roots and revitalizing traditional forms, materials and techniques in order to produce interesting and exciting contemporary furniture that is 100% Chinese. The first definitive book on contemporary Chinese furniture design, which includes not only an in–depth analysis of historic Chinese furniture design in its introduction, but importantly relates the past to what is happening now in Chinese furniture design. Includes individual entries, many based on in–depth interviews with leading figures within the Chinese furniture design, that provide insightful personal perspectives on the rapid evolution of Chinese furniture design over the last decade or so. The publication of this book marks the twenty–fifth anniversary of the Furniture China expo. "Featuring over 400 exemplary works representative of the new wave of creativity in modern Chinese furniture design. Channeling the spirit of the Song and Ming dynasties, as well as other Chinese styles and themes, the designs express a 21st Century Sinocentric national romanticism." – China.org.cn An excerpt from the book: "Since the mid–1990s a definable movement in contemporary Chinese furniture design has been growing and evolving, and has now reached such creative critical mass that it is possible to speak of it enjoying a 'moment'. The publication of this book is intended to share this remarkable design story with the wider world, while introducing the work and ideas of its leading protagonists. The exceptional quality and innovation of the furniture associated with what has already become known as 'New Chinese Design' will undoubtedly set in motion a significant reappraisal of contemporary Chinese design in general. But what is more, this extraordinary development may initiate the tipping of the balance of international design influence from West to East, such is its astonishing creative vitality and snowballing momentum."

Author: Guobin Yang
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231513143
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 488

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Book Description
Since the mid-1990s, the Internet has revolutionized popular expression in China, enabling users to organize, protest, and influence public opinion in unprecedented ways. Guobin Yang's pioneering study maps an innovative range of contentious forms and practices linked to Chinese cyberspace, delineating a nuanced and dynamic image of the Chinese Internet as an arena for creativity, community, conflict, and control. Like many other contemporary protest forms in China and the world, Yang argues, Chinese online activism derives its methods and vitality from multiple and intersecting forces, and state efforts to constrain it have only led to more creative acts of subversion. Transnationalism and the tradition of protest in China's incipient civil society provide cultural and social resources to online activism. Even Internet businesses have encouraged contentious activities, generating an unusual synergy between commerce and activism. Yang's book weaves these strands together to create a vivid story of immense social change, indicating a new era of informational politics.

Author: Bianca Bosker
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824837835
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description
A 108-meter high Eiffel Tower rises above Champs Elysées Square in Hangzhou. A Chengdu residential complex for 200,000 recreates Dorchester, England. An ersatz Queen’s Guard patrols Shanghai’s Thames Town, where pubs and statues of Winston Churchill abound. Gleaming replicas of the White House dot Chinese cities from Fuyang to Shenzhen. These examples are but a sampling of China’s most popular and startling architectural movement: the construction of monumental themed communities that replicate towns and cities in the West. Original Copies presents the first definitive chronicle of this remarkable phenomenon in which entire townships appear to have been airlifted from their historic and geographic foundations in Europe and the Americas, and spot-welded to Chinese cities. These copycat constructions are not theme parks but thriving communities where Chinese families raise children, cook dinners, and simulate the experiences of a pseudo-Orange County or Oxford. In recounting the untold and evolving story of China’s predilection for replicating the greatest architectural hits of the West, Bianca Bosker explores what this unprecedented experiment in “duplitecture” implies for the social, political, architectural, and commercial landscape of contemporary China. With her lively, authoritative narrative, the author shows us how, in subtle but important ways, these homes and public spaces shape the behavior of their residents, as they reflect the achievements, dreams, and anxieties of those who inhabit them, as well as those of their developers and designers. From Chinese philosophical perspectives on copying to twenty-first century market forces, Bosker details the factors giving rise to China’s new breed of building. Her analysis draws on insights from the world’s leading architects, critics and city planners, and on interviews with the residents of these developments.

Author: Jeffrey W. Cody
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824861019
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 410

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Book Description
In the early twentieth century, Chinese traditional architecture and the French-derived methods of the École des Beaux-Arts converged in the United States when Chinese students were given scholarships to train as architects at American universities whose design curricula were dominated by Beaux-Arts methods. Upon their return home in the 1920s and 1930s, these graduates began to practice architecture and create China’s first architectural schools, often transferring a version of what they had learned in the U.S. to Chinese situations. The resulting complex series of design-related transplantations had major implications for China between 1911 and 1949, as it simultaneously underwent cataclysmic social, economic, and political changes. After 1949 and the founding of the People’s Republic, China experienced a radically different wave of influence from the Beaux-Arts through advisors from the Soviet Union who, first under Stalin and later Khrushchev, brought Beaux-Arts ideals in the guise of socialist progress. In the early twenty-first century, China is still feeling the effects of these events. Chinese Architecture and the Beaux-Arts examines the coalescing of the two major architectural systems, placing significant shifts in architectural theory and practice in China within relevant, contemporary, cultural, and educational contexts. Fifteen major scholars from around the world analyze and synthesize these crucial events to shed light on the dramatic architectural and urban changes occurring in China today—many of which have global ramifications. This stimulating and generously illustrated work is divided into three sections, framed by an introduction and a postscript. The first focuses on the convergence of Chinese architecture and the École des Beaux-Arts, outlining the salient aspects of each and suggesting how and why the two "met" in the U.S. The second section centers on the question of how Chinese architects were influenced by the Beaux-Arts and how Chinese architecture was changed as a result. The third takes an even closer look at the Beaux-Arts influence, addressing how innovative practices, new schools of architecture, and buildings whose designs were linked to Beaux-Arts assumptions led to distinctive new paradigms that were rooted in a changing China. By virtue of its scope, scale, and scholarship, this volume promises to become a classic in the fields of Chinese and Western architectural history. Contributors: Tony Atkin, Peter J. Carroll, Yung Ho Chang,Jeffrey W. Cody, Kerry Sizheng Fan, Fu Chao-Ching, Gu Daqing, Seng Kuan,Delin Lai, Xing Ruan, Joseph Rykwert, Nancy S. Steinhardt, David VanZanten, Rudolf Wagner, Zhang Jie, Zhao Chen.

Author: Sarah Bonnemaison
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
ISBN: 9781568988504
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
Over the last few decades, a rich and increasingly diverse practice has emerged in the art world that invites the public to touch, enter, and experience the work, whether it is in a gallery, on city streets, or in the landscape. Like architecture, many of these temporary artworks aspire to alter viewers' experience of the environment. An installation is usually the end product for an artist, but for architects it can also be a preliminary step in an ongoing design process. Like paper projects designed in the absence of "real" architecture, installations offer architects another way to engage in issues critical to their practice. Direct experimentation with architecture's material and social dimensions engages the public around issues in the built environment that concern them and expands the ways that architecture can participate in and impact people's everyday lives. The first survey of its kind, Installations by Architects features fifty of the most significant projects from the last twenty-five years by today's most exciting architects, including Anderson Anderson, Philip Beesley, Diller + Scofidio, John Hejduk, Dan Hoffman, and Kuth/Ranieri Architects. Projects are grouped in critical areas of discussion under the themes of tectonics, body, nature, memory, and public space. Each project is supplemented by interviews with the project architects and the discussions of critics and theorists situated within a larger intellectual context. There is no doubt that installations will continue to play a critical role in the practice of architecture. Installations by Architects aims to contribute to the role of installations in sharpening our understanding of the built environment.

Author: Charles Horner
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820333344
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
As China debates its past, how will it define its future? In this work, Horner offers a different interpretation of how China's changed view of its modern historical experience has also changed China's understanding of its long intellectual and cultural tradition.

Author: Michael Keane
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136345868
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
Recognising that creativity is a major driving force in the post-industrial economy, the Chinese government has recently established a range of "creative clusters" – industrial parks devoted to media industries, and arts districts – in order to promote the development of the creative industries. This book examines these new creative clusters, outlining their nature and purpose, and assessing their effectiveness. Drawing on case studies of a range of cluster models, and comparing them with international examples, the book demonstrates that creativity, both in China and internationally, is in fact a process of fitting new ideas to existing patterns, models and formats. It shows how large and exceptionally impressive creative clusters have been successfully established, but raises the important questions of whether profit or culture is the driving force, and of whether the bringing together of independent-minded, creative people, entrepreneurial businessmen, preferential policies and foreign investment may in time lead to unintended changes in social and political attitudes in China, including a weakening of state bureaucratic power. An important contribution to the existing literature on the subject, this book will be of great interest to scholars of urban studies, cultural geography, cultural economics and Asian studies.

Author: John Cary
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 1610917936
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
The book reveals a new understanding of the ways that design shapes our lives and gives professionals and interested citizens the tools to seek out and demand designs that dignify.